Hi,
On 13 Dec 2006, at 00:17, Joachim Durchholz wrote:
> Kirsten Chevalier schrieb:
>> I think that it would serve this
>> community well if somebody was able to achieve a better understanding
>> of the social reasons why some programming languages are adopted and
>> some aren't. I think all of us already know that the reason isn't
>> "because some are better than others," but it might be time for
>> someone to go beyond that.
>> Actually, it's quite simple: following the ideology de jour and
> teaching-relevant support.
>> Teachers will teach what's mainstream ideology (I'm using
> "ideology" in a strictly neutral sense here).
> Pascal was popular because teachers felt that structured
> programming should be taught to the masses, and you couldn't abuse
> goto in Pascal to make a program unstructured.
> Later, universities shifted more towards "economic usefulness".
> Which made C (and, later, Java) much more interesting ideologically.
Since the rise of Java, our university has been teaching almost
nothing else. A short course in C, the FP course is being phased out.
Some teachers had an interest in having Java knowledgeable kids
graduating. I guess the industry also asked for Java knowledge in
general. I think it's sad for the students. A language is sometimes
more than just syntax, the paradigms it uses should be known, and
I've seen too many students who have no clue what a pointer is, who
cannot apply simply things such as map and filter ... I'm no haskell
wizard, but the very basics I do grok.
> Teaching-relevant support means: readily available tools. I.e.
> compilers, debuggers, editor support, and all of this with campus
> licenses or open sourced.
>>> I don't think that Haskell can compete on the ideological front
> right now. That domain is firmly in the area of C/C++/Java. Erlang
> isn't really winning here either, but it does have the advantage of
> being connected to success stories from Ericsson.
> To really compete, Haskell needs what people like to call
> "industrial-strength": industrial-strength compilers, industrial-
> strength libraries, industrial-strength IDEs. In other words,
> seamless Eclipse and Visual Studio integration, heaps and heaps of
> libraries, and bullet-proof compilers, all of this working right
> out of the box. (I see that this all is being worked on.)
Having a(n important) company backing Haskell in a platform-
independent way would certainly help, IMHO. But to convince people to
use it, they need to be taught before they go out to find a job.
-- Andy